New bee hive question

[jackelope]

Well, more trouble in paradise. My family was out of town since Thursday and my friends where we keep the hive are also out of town. Got off the plane last night to a barrage of text messages and phone calls. It seems one of the neighbors found a swarm in a tree. They called my friends who won't be back for a week to tell them they think our bees swarmed. Then they called me. We have a local beekeeper who they called who went and caught the swarm and put them in a box. Then he went over and checked our hive. He's pretty sure our hive split and half of them left. I guess that means we let another queen hatch. Really, we should have done some more learning on this before diving in. I think what we should be doing is monitoring for queen cells and getting rid of them when they appear? Uggg... I guess it's a sign of a strong hive but we're not in a position for another hive. We told the beekeeper he could keep our split. Our hive still has plenty of bees he says. I'm going to go check it out tonight. I thought it was uncommon for a new package to swarm in the first year. Maybe a split is different.

[jasnt]

Our new hive split too but we had another hive. Then 2 days later another swarm showed up so we bought one and now have 3

[trophyhunt]

Cool hobby Josh, hope it works out.  So how much honey do you expect to get? Do you just put it in a jar and it's ready?   

[Widgeondeke]

Lucky you          

  no wonder you weren't very talkative last night

[jackelope]

Cool hobby Josh, hope it works out.  So how much honey do you expect to get? Do you just put it in a jar and it's ready?   

Really I don't know. I don't expect any till next spring, but at the rate they're building out, maybe sooner.
I think if a medium frame full of honey weighs 5 pounds, maybe 30 pounds or so? Really I don't have a clue.

[Netminder01]

Cool hobby Josh, hope it works out.  So how much honey do you expect to get? Do you just put it in a jar and it's ready?   

Really I don't know. I don't expect any till next spring, but at the rate they're building out, maybe sooner.
I think if a medium frame full of honey weighs 5 pounds, maybe 30 pounds or so? Really I don't have a clue.

Time lapse video..... chronicle the whole thing especially the neighbors spinning up.  ;-)

[go4itlab]

Same thing happened to me a few years back. Make sure you go thru the whole hive. I didn't thinking, well they swarmed so thats thats and ended up with a secondary swarm. They can have multiple queen cells and if the new queen doesn't kill them all thats what happened. I was lucky enough to catch both but my honey yield suffered. Due to not having enough drawn out comb to put in the swam boxes, as well as just the loss of number off the original.

[Humptulips]

Digging through and cutting queen cells is a little too labor intensive for me. I can't believe many would do it. I just try and give them plenty of room up until July and catch swarms when I can.
Hasn't been many swarms this year for me. Only one at home and 1 or 2 at my other apiary. Caught 13 in bait hives plus the one caught at home puts me at 28 now.

[jackelope]

They've got plenty of room. I got into the hive tonight. I'm going to post some pics in hopes that some of you guys in the know will help me ID what's going on. I think that only a couple of the pictures will relate to the swarm. But the others are interesting to talk about anyway.

Swarm cells? Bottom right of the frame, and then a close up.

[jackelope]

What's going on here? And what should I do about it??

[jackelope]

A couple different frames pulled for inspection.

[DaveMonti]

I think the larger "growth" looking bit of comb is just where the bees built it out that way.  I used to find these on occasion, and they would break open when I pulled the frame out.  It would expose the larva, just like your pictures.  You can probably just leave it, but I think I used to just shave them off down to the foundation if possible, hope that the bees don't continue to build across frames.  That can make them a bear to pull out! 

The cells at the bottom of the frame look kind of small for queen cells.  Take a look at some pictures on the internet.  Queen cells are usually the size of a peanut, with similar texture. 

Is that a queen in the upper right of the close up shot of the cells at the bottom of the frame?  It's a bigger bee than the others, but it just might be the image.

It's been quite a while since I've been in a hive, so there may be plenty of others that can chime in with better wisdom!

[Humptulips]

First is queen cells. I don't see any larvae anywhere and looks like the tail end of mature brood hatching. I would say your bees were without a mated queen and are or were raising a queen. Possibly old queen gone with swarm and young queen not laying yet. I would not cut those queen cells unless I saw a queen.
Second is burr comb, drone cells. Bees like a few drone cells especially when they are raising queens and your new comb is all worker cells. They mostly find a place for some drone comb so not unusual.

The queen cells look small alright but the one on the right is for sure a queen cell. Almost look like emergency queen cells but maybe not.

[go4itlab]

I agree with Humptulips  sound advice.

[jackelope]

Thanks guys.